Myiesha Gordon Beales

Myiesha Gordon Beales is a multidisciplinary artist, researcher and educator from Tulsa, Oklahoma. Myiesha earned a Bachelor’s degree in Fine Art from Northeastern State University in Tahlequah, Oklahoma and a Master’s degree in Arts, Entertainment and Media Management from Columbia College in Chicago, Illinois.

While in Chicago, she worked as an Arts Management Consultant for Murphy Rabb Inc., an art advisory firm that specializes in building corporate and residential art collections by mid-career and established African American artists. She also worked with artists at Little Black Pearl Art and Design Center, developing art events. In 2008, she accepted a position at Texas A&M University in College Station, Texas as a Museum Educator and Coordinator of Art Exhibitions and Programs, where she also taught a freshman seminar course on art and creativity. 

In 2012, she began pursuing a doctorate of education at Teachers College, Columbia University, with a focus on creativity in cross-cultural contexts and alternative pedagogy. In 2016, she began traveling around the world, conducting research on different cultures, developing art projects, and assisting with building and firing woodfired kilns for ceramics. She has studied, built and assisted with firing kilns in Denmark, South Korea and England, most recently at Oxford University. 

Her teaching philosophy revolves around creativity and equity, and creating systems that ensure quality art education for all people.

The Fire Sculpture Project

Myiesha Gordon Beales enacts a way to reconcile the vileness of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre with optimism for the future through The Fire Sculpture Project. The project takes the shape of a ten-foot-tall hand-formed clay building, which will be fired outdoors for three days. By molding soft clay into individual bricks, community members will collectively build this monument by hand, echoing the building of a Black utopia by the Greenwood community. Through the outdoor firing process, Beales acknowledges the devastation that occurred when Greenwood was burned. However, building on the dual symbolism of fire, from this will emerge a permanent structure living on as a testament to the resilience and collaboration of the Greenwood community.

Viewers can see The Fire Sculpture Project at 2613 E. 29th Place North (an approximation since there is no actual address). From Lewis, turn East on 29th Place North, the site is located at the end of the street.